


all trivial fond records

by icarusandtheson



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23635114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusandtheson/pseuds/icarusandtheson
Summary: The cast of Patsy Custis’ Broadway directorial debut gather to celebrate the production's recent success.Or: #YayHamlet
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton & George Washington, Alexander Hamilton/George Washington
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	all trivial fond records

**Author's Note:**

> a while back someone on tumblr mentioned the concept of shakespearean actor!gwash, and the idea for this au spiraled from there. mildly relevant: george and martha never married, but he helped her raise jacky and patsy. i am fully aware nobody but me cares about these details, and this is barely relevant to this particular fic, but. the (main) cast: alexander hamilton as prince hamlet, john laurens/hercules mulligan/gilbert lafayette as horatio/rosencrantz/guildenstern on an alternating basis, george washington as the ghost of king hamlet, aaron burr as claudius, martha dandridge as gertrude, angelica schuyler as laertes, elizabeth schuyler as ophelia

_While Shakespeare’s work ostensibly turns on Hamlet’s grief for his father, Custis’ production spotlights the father-son relationship nearly to the exclusion of all other dynamics. Washington commands the stage as effectively as King Hamlet’s ghost as he has in any of his leading roles, and it is this presence that renders Hamlet’s wide-eyed, obsessive attentions not only believable but also strikingly necessary. “Wicked or charitable”, neither the audience nor Hamlet can look away._

_Hamilton’s take on the play’s protagonist is at turns tragic and infernal; nowhere in sight is the noble, tortured hero of past iterations, including Washington’s own portrayal. Yet even at his most damnable -- his casting off of Ophelia is particularly difficult to stomach considering the quiet dignity and strength Schuyler imbues the character with -- the viewer finds themselves hard-pressed not to recall Hamlet wrenching free of restraining arms to chase his father into the dark, more lost child than bitter wretch or clever wordsmith. Hamilton plays the character on the edge of constant breakdown, the sense of which is exacerbated by Washington’s King Hamlet regularly watching from the scaffolding throughout the production -_ -

“Alexander?”

Alex flinches, a caught feeling trapped in his throat even though there’s no reason for it, he’s not _doing_ anything. He pockets his phone and turns to face George, leaning against the doorway. “Yeah, sorry. Were you talking to me?” 

George shakes his head. “Only wondering if you were ready to join us again.” 

“Yeah, I -- yeah, sure. I was just checking something.” 

“Tell me you weren’t reading reviews.” 

Alex’s mouth twitches. “I wasn’t reading reviews.” 

George sighs. “Alex.” 

“It’s fine, I’m fine. It was good.” George still looks faintly skeptical, so Alex adds, “She called me infernal.” 

George hums, a knowing kind of amusement sparking in his eyes. Alex doesn’t mind it so much, even if it’s at his expense. Better than disappointment -- better in almost the exact inverse way, actually. “I’m sure you appreciated that.” 

Alex shrugs. “If I have to read one more commentary on the _understated nobility_ of my performance I’m going to fucking lose it, you know?” Or one more person telling him he got it wrong, like Shakespeare isn’t almost _compulsively_ subjective, like he hasn’t studied the play and the character and every major piece of scholarship on -- 

_Focus, Hamilton._

“It was good to see someone actually get it.” 

George nods. “You’ve worked hard on your interpretation, you deserve the recognition.” 

Alex is an actor, and a fucking good one, so he nods like the praise is nice to hear, and not something he’s been striving for since the moment he got the lead -- since before then, probably. “Thanks.” 

“What was wrong with it, then?”

Alex frowns up at him. “What?”

“The review. It made you unhappy.”

“I’m not,” Alex says quickly. “It didn’t.”

George’s brows raise briefly, but he doesn’t push. “I think Patsy wants to say a few words,” he says instead. “I’m assuming she’ll want her star to be there when she does.” 

“Right,” Alex says, pathetically glad for the change in subject. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hold anything up.”

“You haven’t,” George says. “I just wanted to come and check up on you.”

Alex snorts. “Making sure I’m not crying in Martha’s parlor because of a bad write-up?”

George slants him a look -- not necessarily chiding, just clear-eyed. “Making sure you’re alright,” he says, and it does and doesn’t feel like a correction. 

The familiar urge to duck his head, break eye contact. Alex fights it, even manages a smile. “I’m good. Thanks, though.” 

“Any time.” 

The dining room is still spilling over with conversation and drinks and good food when they get back. Alex could almost believe they weren’t missed -- he ignores a few glances from his castmates for a few different reasons. 

Martha catches sight of them and crosses the room; she fits into the space by George’s side with the easy familiarity of years spent sharing the same stage, the same life. “I was wondering where you got to,” she says. “Is everything alright?” 

Alex has one brief, mortifying moment to imagine telling _Martha Dandridge_ he slipped off to read a review because he’s fucking obsessed and chronically insecure. She’d laugh at him from her pile of Tonys. Or -- no, she wouldn’t, and that would probably be worse, the gentle understanding she’d have for him.

“Just talking business,” George says. 

Martha glances at Alex, eyes curious and sparkling. Abruptly: the inconvenient reminder that she’s beautiful, that her and George are beautiful together. Alex never forgot, but it’s easier not to think about these days -- they don’t share a stage for this production, the first time in all the plays they’ve worked on together. 

“Have you asked him yet?” she asks, voice low enough that Alex just barely makes it out. 

George shakes his head, a short sharp movement, a there-and-gone upward tick at the corner of his mouth. Then he catches Alex looking, and the smile finds its way out after all. “Later,” he says, squeezing Alex’s arm gently. “All good, I promise.” 

Martha conceals a smile -- poorly -- behind her champagne glass, and before Alex can make out what any of it means, their director is calling for their attention.

It’s a small affair, just those of them who have been with the production since the start. There’s another, bigger party scheduled for the full cast and crew later, and Patsy will probably be more in her element then, but right now she’s among friends and family and she looks like what she is: a young girl lit up with her first big success, almost beside herself with delight. 

“I’ve tried to thank each of you as often as I can for taking on this project with me, but it’s never felt like enough, and I doubt that’s going to change. So: thank you for believing in this production, and for believing in a director who’s biggest source of theater acclaim up until that point was that she was raised by two Broadway legends.” The room fills with laughter, and Patsy shrugs, self-deprecating and every bit as effortlessly charming as Alex would expect from someone who grew up with George Washington as an influence. 

A glance over at George confirms what Alex already knows: George’s eyes are all for her, warmth and pride and love pouring out of him. Not for the first time over the course of this project, Alex finds himself bitterly jealous of Patsy Custis, and not for the first time he shuffles the guilt of it off into some dark little corner where he keeps ugly things he doesn’t want to look at. The trouble is that it’s blinding, George’s look, and it illuminates everything, even the ugly. 

“I’ve been beyond lucky to surround myself with such a talented group of people. Every review that pours in praising your talent and your dedication is beyond well-deserved, and doesn’t come close to what I’ve seen working with you.”

It’s not even that it’s inaccurate to call his Hamlet a lost child -- it’s not. When Alex fleshed out his motivations with George and Patsy -- back when this was just Patsy’s pet project and something he was entertaining because he hadn’t landed any good parts for a while, because George took him out to lunch and asked him personally -- it made the most sense, to actually focus in on what was presumably the emotional center of the play. The rest, Hamlet’s consistent procrastination and his spasms of cruelty, could pivot on that decay, that loss of center. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have made as much sense to him if George wasn’t the ghost. Maybe if it was another actor he would have gone the tortured, noble route because he didn’t have the full weight of George’s Hamlet, still achingly perfect even through grainy twenty-year old footage, pressing in on him, didn’t have the incentive of pouring over the source material with George beside him, didn’t already know what it was to chase him and have nothing to show for it at all but grief and ache. 

It’s not like it would have occurred to him that losing a father could do that to a person -- maybe if they’d genderbent the king like they had with Laertes, if Martha played the ghost instead. 

Maybe all of that is true, but it’s supposed to be his, not some reviewer’s, not every single one of her readers’. He doesn’t need to read that he follows George around like a lost puppy, like a scared little boy grasping for comfort in the dark. 

“ -- Alexander, our incomparable Hamlet.” 

Alex thinks _wide-eyed,_ thinks about how that was never in the script, or in his and George’s scribbled notes in the margins. Everybody is looking at him. George’s hand claps him on the shoulder. 

Alex is a damned good actor, so he smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> *thanks for reading! leave a kudos and comment if you liked it!  
> *find me on tumblr at [icarusandtheson](https://icarusandtheson.tumblr.com/)


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